from the ukraine/russian boarder. half an hour away from the opening of the markets. yesterday they took a massive dive after the fed s announcement of another interest rate hike. cnbc s andrew ross sorkin will join us shortly. mike barnicle back with us for the hour. we begin with the lawsuit from the state of new york against donald trump. his eldest children and the trump organization alleging years of fraud. the state is seeking $250 million in damages and wants to bar the family from serving as officers of new york-based companies. the lawsuit is more than 200 pages long and outlines exactly how trump allegedly overvalued his assets by billions of dollars to get more favorable loans. trump, his children, and the organization are accused of using more than 200 false and misleading asset valuations over a ten-year period. new york state attorney general letitia james says she has referred to violations to the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york and to the
things. the investigation on the criminal side is the largest question. caroline, talking about alleged fraud here, examples like saying your apartment is 30,000 square feet and it s valued at $327 million but no apartment in the history of new york has been close to that, actually 11,000 square feet and worth a fraction of that. that s one example. the attorney general laid out ten yearses of this pattern from the trump organization and from the trump family. what did you see in this document that would concern you if you were one of trump s defense attorneys? a lot, willie, but that s right. letitia james has made so secret of the fact she s had trump and trump org in her crosshairs for years. she effectively ran on that platform and has opened up herself to a little criticism on that. team trump, their defense is this is a witch-hunt, a malicious prosecution, you know, he s being singled out, everybody does this in sort of the new york real estate world.
there s no arraignment or anything like that. ma what s unusual about this case is letitia james has already taken the deposition. that typically is part of the discovery process and would come after the filing of a complaint, but because of the unique nature of this case, they ve already done it. you ll recall trump took the fifth in about 400 answers. what s interesting about that, that s really, again, a death knell for him. you can use that with negative inference. the jury can say you can draw an adverse influence from taking your 5th amendment right against self-incrimination. you can t co-do that in a criminal case. so i guess his lawyers really, really, really didn t want him to speak. interview on fox news about it the other night. he took the other path as he usually does. caroline, great to have you here. we also are following new
a bank about how much money they have in order to get a favorable loan to buy a home or send their kid to college. and if they did, the government would throw the book at them. why should this be any different? it is a tale of two justice systems, one for everyday working people and one for the elite, the rich, and the powerful. following that news conference, donald trump railed against the attorney general and released statements in social media again calling her racist and claiming the case is a witch-hunt. let s bring in msnbc chief legal correspondent and host of the beat on msnbc, ari melber. also with us criminal defense attorney caroline palise. ari, your broad impressions of what you heard at the news conference and read through in that 200-page lawsuit. how much potentially is donald trump, the trump organization, and its children in this